The Ranger

by Ace Atkins

  Two rows back a man started to scream: “Shana-meana. Honi-aname. Shana-meana Homa-aname.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Lena leaned over to Charley and whispered. “They gonna start that business? We won’t be out of here till midnight.”

  “Shush. Hadn’t you ever heard an unbridled soul speak?”

  Lena whispered again to Charley, this time saying she had to pee pee, and he looked real aggravated as he stood to let her and the baby out, not even offering to help her a little bit, everyone too concentrated on Brother Davis, lost and wandering, picking manna from the air, proud as hell of that cordless microphone, where he could leap off the stage and touch folks’ hands like he was a damn Kenny Chesney. Gowrie and his daddy sat in the last row, not even bothering to dress for the night service. Gowrie had on an old Army coat, the hair on his face about the same stubbled length as that on his head. His daddy wore a ragged T-shirt that read HAULIN’ ASS, with a girl wearing a thong riding a motorcycle.

  Gowrie winked at her and reached out to touch the baby—some kind of gesture of forgiveness—as she turned and gave him her backside, shouldering the door and heading into the lobby.

  A card table had been set up with free Bibles with plastic covers and tons of pamphlets on the End Times, and those comic books you see in gas-station bathrooms about men humping each other or drinking bottles marked with XXX, as if liquor came like that anymore.

  She sat in a hard plastic seat and leafed through them as she pulled up her sweater and set the baby to her breast, the baby finding her nipple as easy as you please. Lena saw one comic where Jesus appeared at a bar and the man was too drunk to even realize there was a man with long hair and a beard—wearing a robe and sandals, no less—trying to chat him up.

  “How old is she?” asked the woman behind the card table, knowing the baby was a girl on account of the pink blanket.

  “One day.”

  “She sure is hungry.”

  Lena rocked her in that hard school seat.

  “Y’all should be alone,” the woman said.

  Lena heard someone strumming an electric guitar, and the drum machine kicked in, an off-key voice singing some Christian rock.

  “I would like that.”

  She led Lena down a long hallway and back behind what would’ve been the screen of the old theater. The noise was muffled by a big concrete wall, and she could sit there without men coming in and craning their heads to look at her young titties. She closed her eyes, falling asleep for a long while, not dreaming but dead asleep, then breaking awake and back, feeling the baby suckle on her, her body feeling hollow and bled out and spent. Hands shaky and hungry, wishing that son of a bitch onstage would get done with what he had to say so they could get to that food she’d been promised. Brother Davis’s words sounded as if they were coming from the bottom of the sea or an old worn-out videotape:

  “They will see the bloodstained path that was in my death in my resurrection.

  “When you say you can’t or shouldn’t, know that I have gone before you. I have prepared the way. And know I am working through you. Hallelujah!”

  “Hallelujah,” Lena said, very small, snuggling her baby. “Get done, you asshole preacher.”

  She rocked the child among the stage props that had been made by children, castles and dragons and sheep and robes. She fell asleep again to the pounding of words and a wave of nonsensical stuttering going over the people like water. She stood and walked in the dim light, running her hands over the piles of plastic swords and fake trees, looking for a way out.

  Against the back wall was another card table, two of them pushed together, lined with piles of guns and fat bundles of cash.

  Holy shit. Cash.

  For a moment Lena felt like a spell had come over her, and she stepped toward the table, reaching for the pile of money, smiling, feeling like it might actually be a real thing—a holy prayer answered!—when the door slammed open and two of Gowrie’s boys rolled through it, full of piss and beer, pushing at her and asking her what in God’s name did she think she was doing by breaking in back here?

  “I had to feed my baby, you morons.”

  “You can’t be back here,” one of them said, indistinguishable from the other, with their tattoos and bald heads and black T-shirts. “No way. Come on.”

  They led her back to the sanctuary and sat her down, her legs feeling like they’d given out. The baby began to cry, and Lena moved her onto a soft shoulder to pat. The movie theater seemed like a bus station or purgatory, and if this whole thing didn’t end soon she’d just walk clean out the door, Charley Booth in tow or not.

  “God said, ‘Moses, they may not like you, never like you, talk about you, gossip about you. But they will never be able to deny I am not with you.’ And guess what they did? They lied about Moses, talked behind his back, even wanted to put him to death. But them ole Israelites could never deny he had been led by God’s hand. They could not deny it.”

  There was a strong hand on Lena’s shoulder, and she craned her neck to see Gowrie standing over her, a fat shadow, saying, Amen. Amen. Amen. He smelled like sulfur and smoke. His hands had been stained as black as tar.

  Brother Davis moved on down the center aisle, people touching him, his stupid grin showing his golden teeth. “Moses says, ‘God, I ssss—stutter. How can I s—speak through the Majestic One—how can You use one that cain’t talk plain?’ My friends, I am not an eloquent man, either. Hell, I don’t even really know the word . . . I wasn’t eloquent then and do not know, even if I’d had an encounter with the bush, if I’d be any different. We all have to deal with them issues. The Lord God doesn’t want a perfect life. But y’all can relate to someone who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death and come out smelling like a rose.

  “God says that’s okay,” Brother Davis said. “I need a leader.”

  Davis was on them now, laying his hand upon Gowrie. Gowrie closed his eyes.

  “You may see a rod turned to a snake and a snake turned to a rod,” Brother Davis said. “But who among us is not afraid to reach out and touch it? Do not have fear, my friends.”

  The people said, “Amen.”

  “Who in the hell goes to church on a Tuesday night?” Quinn asked.

  “These folks have had church about every night since they took over the movie house,” Boom said. “It’s what they do.”

  “I wish it was still a movie house.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look worn out.”

  Quinn shrugged.

  They sat in Quinn’s truck across the town Square, watching the men and women file out of the theater and climb into their cars and trucks, heading back to their compound. He saw Gowrie and Brother Davis. Lena walked with her child and a skinny boy with jug ears that Quinn believed to be the child’s father.

  “So what’s up?” Boom asked.

  “I got a little tour of the county the other night with a guy who used to work for Gowrie.”

  “The same one that was blown up?”

  “Yep.”

  “And what’d we learn?”

  “I got a pretty solid feel for Gowrie’s whole operation here,” Quinn said. “He cooks at a half-dozen trailers spread throughout the county.”

  “And you’re thinking that we might want to shut ’em down.”

  “You think I should leave it alone?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You don’t need to be a part of this.”

  “You’re forgetting one thing, man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What you got in mind sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Boom said, smiling, half-light shadowing his face. “Let’s kick that hatin’ bastard square in the nuts.”

  Quinn smiled, cranked the old Ford, and knocked it into gear.

  26

  Five of the six went a little something like this:

  Quinn
would kick in the front door of the trailer. Boom would enter with that big-ass Colt .44 Anaconda and blast a hole in the wall if a man faced him. Another man might run from a back room, and Quinn would shoot at him with his .45, force him to drop his weapon, knowing if anyone came out with a gun pointed at him he’d have to neutralize him. Quinn was prepared to do it, had hoped that someone would come for him like that, wanting it. But instead they found most of these men and women napping, watching television, and one couple was having sex when they snuck up on their trailer.

  The most they found at one trailer was three people. The third had been a child, not even eight. They didn’t bind those folks. Quinn just held the man and woman, as Boom holstered the .44 in his thick belt and dragged out their cook pots and boxes of Sudafed, fertilizer, and assorted crap.

  The little girl watched the whole thing half asleep, and cocked her head at one point, looking at Boom, and said, “Where’s your arm?”

  He bent down and smiled at her. “I guess I forgot to put it on.”

  The little girl, dressed in pink pajamas, grinned at him. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  At the other trailers, folks were kicked to the floor and bound at the wrists with thick plastic binders Quinn had brought. There had been a scuffle with one skinny man, but Quinn had twisted his arm behind his back until a joint cracked and kicked him in the head. The man got real still after that and rolled over like a good dog, holding up his wrists, guessing they were cops.

  Quinn and Boom never said any different.

  They didn’t cover their faces. Quinn wanted them to see him. What would they report? Two men had broken into their trailers, robbed them of their meth stash, and took their cook pots and chemicals, guns and knives?

  Rangers trained every day they weren’t on a mission. At Fort Benning, Quinn would send his platoon into the shoot houses—often with other soldiers sitting in chairs and tables—and they’d have to shoot all around any friendlies, dropping bad-guy targets, live ammo flying around them. You kicked in doors, you broke windows. You hit them hard and fast, and often no one could react in time. It was all the element of surprise, that damn fist knocking you in the gut before you could find your pants.

  He missed the flash bangs and his Remington pump. But, what the hell. He could’ve cleared these rooms with a butter knife.

  It was only at the last house that someone fired a gun at Boom, a fat kid with a shaved head sitting in a La—Z—Boy, smoking dope and holding a .38 straight at the one-armed black giant before him.

  Quinn shot the hand with the weapon, the fat, bare-chested baby falling to the floor, searching for a lost thumb, blood across the white leather of his couch.

  “Oh, shit,” Boom said, laughing.

  They threw the boy a towel. The last time he’d seen the fat man, he’d been in the back of an empty cattle trailer, cocky and proud, as Quinn had just tossed them from his land.

  “You tell Gowrie something?” Quinn said.

  The boy’s face had turned gray. But he looked at Quinn and nodded, the dish towel soaked in blood, as he rocked back and forth, trying to find some kind of end to the pain and shock. He was crying and calling Boom a “no-’count nigger.”

  “Tell him I’m waiting for him.”

  “Shit,” the boy said, almost screaming. “You think he’s goin’ for that? Y’all are dead men.”

  Boom patted the boy’s bald head like you would a dog and said, “Shut up, Porky, while my buddy puts these cuffs on you.”

  Ditto shifted awake when he heard the cars sometime early in the morning. It was cold, and he slid into his mud boots and grabbed an old jacket and his gun—Gowrie telling the boys to always carry a weapon or he’d whip their ass—and scrambled down the wood porch of the trailer to the burning oil drum, where the boys always met. Gowrie was wild-eyed and mad as hell, not wearing a shirt, only jeans and boots, and screaming, wanting to know what the hell happened, people were supposed to be watching out instead of fiddling with their dicks.

  Ditto knew they’d been hit.

  All the screaming woke Lena, too, and Ditto saw her emerge from the trailer she’d been sharing with Charley and another couple boys. She stood on the railing in a puffy blue coat and watched them, listening to Gowrie scream and rant, until she rolled her eyes and went back inside and Charley took her place, wiping sleep from his eyes and stumbling down the long, endless hill, sliding down into Hell Creek. You could warm yourself by the fire and have a drink, while Gowrie said everyone needed to load up and prepare because this shit would not stand.

  They’d had some kind of fun getting revenge for all that lost meat and ice cream and guns that had bent and twisted in the flames of their barn. But what this man had gone and done to Gowrie was a whole ’nother deal. This wouldn’t just be some torched barns and dead cows. It was fixin’ to get bloody.

  Gowrie grabbed Ditto by the shirt and pulled him in, with that stink breath and hot words, and said, “Go get my daddy. Go. Now!”

  And Ditto scrambled off, figuring maybe he could slip off as everyone assembled, maybe no one would notice him being gone, and he could make a couple phone calls, because back here in the booger woods ain’t no kind of cell phone worked.

  He found a path and then a trailer, and knocked. He tried it again and then just walked in, spotting the old man and Brother Davis passed out on the floor, the television looping some kind of porno movie with two black women on a beach. He kicked at Daddy Gowrie, an empty bottle within fingers’ reach, and he didn’t move, and for a moment Ditto thought that the old guy might be dead.

  He kicked at him again, and then kicked at Brother Davis.

  But the old men were dead drunk, and he figured that’s just what he’d tell Gowrie, to take some heat off him.

  Back at the camp, trucks and cars had started up, blowing hot exhaust into the freezing air. Gowrie was squatted in the dirt, smoking a cigarette, in the headlight glow of his old black Camaro. He drew out some plans with a stick for a few of the fellas, and they smiled and grinned like some kind of dirty joke had been told.

  And Gowrie looked at him and tilted his head.

  “Him and the preacher are passed out.”

  “You try and wake ’em?”

  “I kicked at ’em.”

  “Shit,” Gowrie said. “Brother Davis backslides when he preaches like that. I can’t fault him. Come on.”

  “Who’s watching the women, the camp, if all of us leave?”

  “How ’bout you?”

  “I want to kill those bastards, too.”

  Gowrie spent the smoke, flicked it into the dirt. Ditto spotted tattoos on his biceps reading GOD, LOVE, MURDER, each word with a symbol: an angel, a heart, a gun. The older man took a swig of Jack Daniel’s and passed him the bottle.

  “You hold tight, little brother,” Gowrie said, smiling with blackened teeth. “You sit tight with your guns on that road and you hit anything you see move. I don’t care what you see.”

  Ditto nodded.

  The boys were off in a plume of dust and exhaust, red taillights headed in a line up the hill and down the highway. It was cold and silent and still as they disappeared. He stood there, thinking of a way to walk to a phone. They hadn’t left a single vehicle.

  Lena returned to the porch, watching him. He smiled at her and moved to the base of the crooked wood steps.

  “Don’t you want to go shoot some people?” she asked.

  “I’m watching the camp.”

  “Let me have a cigarette,” she said.

  “What about your baby?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  He reached into his old coat for the pack and a lighter. He sat down on the stoop with her on the most ragged piece of property he could imagine, half the land’s pine trees not quite right for the cutting and the other half logged to shit. The charred rafters of the barn leaning into a weird heap in the moonlight.

  “What happened?” she asked, taking a seat next to him, making his heart do a backflip.
>
  “Somebody robbed our people. Tim got his hand shot up.”

  “Who did it?”

  “That soldier,” Ditto said. “Gowrie says he hates everything we stand for.”

  “What do we stand for?” Lena asked.

  “Maybe you should ask Charley Booth about that,” he said, smiling. “He seemed to be excited about all this mess.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “You sure don’t seem to give two shits.”

  “You hungry?”

  “I’m good,” she said. “Why are you here?”

  “I ask myself that every day.”

  “Hard when you got nowhere else to be.”

  “You need to get some sleep,” Ditto said, taking the rifle and slinging it back on his shoulder. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen with these boys. Might be good if you found another place to stay.”

  “Soon as my limousine arrives, I’ll let you know.”

  “But you’d leave if you could?”

  She nodded.

  “Without Charley Booth?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t even know who that son of a bitch is.”

  Ditto smiled so big he felt like his face might break apart, slipping his frozen hands into his pockets and stamping his feet onto the frozen, eroded ground. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Taylor Swift?”

  They came for Quinn at dawn.

  He’d been waiting for the last four hours at the tree line near the old farmhouse and found the time sort of peaceful, seeing that first light bleeding across his frosted land and up through the base of the forest at the roots and then spilling up onto his worn boots. He’d brought nothing but his compound bow, a nice Mathews HyperLite that could send an arrow at 350 feet per second, and had dressed head to toe in camo, shielding part of his face with a camo ski mask. He was thankful for the morning light. Despite the thick clothes, he’d grown cold in the woods, and he’d hoped for some action just to move for a bit.

  He breathed slow and even, heartbeat steadied, just like it had always been.

  He’d heard their cars and trucks from a mile away. But they’d taken it in their minds to hike over from the main highway, maybe a half mile over some creeks, and then cut into the land, checking the farmhouse, finding it empty, and then heading across the break in the trees by the burned-out barn and up into the woods and the old oaks where Quinn waited. His bow drawn and ready as they walked right past him, following a deer trail up into the hills. Quinn counted fourteen of them.